Death of American Virtue - Ken Gormley [455]
In terms of his own role in these events, Starr expressed conflicted feelings. If he were to run into Bill Clinton at an out-of-the-way barbecue joint, where he could speak freely without microphones recording each word, he would probably say to the former president, “‘I’m sorry that it all happened.’” Starr quickly clarified: “Not in the form of an apology, but really as a reflection.” He certainly would express deep sorrow that “the country was put through this. And then our respective families and those around us. Living in rancor is just a horrible way to live.” But Starr also would be forced to tell Clinton, for his own sake, “It’s so much better to deal candidly and forthrightly with the truth. And then make matters right.… Don’t engage in a cover-up. Don’t engage in these offenses against the integrity of our system.”
Starr prayed that a hundred years in the future, when scholars and ordinary citizens studied these events, history would view him in a kind and forgiving light. He would be satisfied, he said, if accounts of the Clinton-Starr imbroglio in American textbooks simply recorded that “I was a lawyer and former judge who was called upon to do a very unpleasant duty under very difficult circumstances, and who did it honorably.” He lifted his eyes and concluded in a quiet voice, “That’s about all I can hope for.”
Alice Starr, Ken’s bride of over thirty years, expressed pure relief that her husband’s work was over. She was thrilled when Clinton finally struck a deal with Robert Ray and ended this long national nightmare. “There was no sense in sending [Clinton] to jail,” Alice said, analyzing the options. “He never would go to jail anyway, and what more needs to be said? To rehash all these details again in a court of law would be miserable for the country.”
To those who remained convinced that her husband had plotted to bring down the president on account of some black-hearted loathing of Bill Clinton, Alice would correct the record: “His job wasn’t to hate [Clinton] or to try to convict him. His job was to bring out the facts. He did do that.” She added, “And he didn’t relish his job at all.”
In the end, Alice Starr took solace in Ken’s proving himself, once again, to be a man of absolute honesty and integrity. Once her husband was able to resume a normal life—giving speeches, attending conferences, and mingling with regular folks at church socials—she was heartened to see that most Americans, of all political persuasions, were duly impressed. “Pretty much everywhere we go,” Alice said, “people who meet him can’t believe that he doesn’t have horns, you know, growing out of his head.”
As the Starr family relocated to the sun-sprayed Pacific coast to begin life anew at Pepperdine, Alice summarized the five-year Clinton “unpleasantness” by saying that her husband accepted the post as independent counsel out of a sense of duty, yet he did so at a huge personal cost. “It’s really the worst job he’s ever, ever had,” she said, folding her hands and ending her comments on that polite note rather than sharing her unadulterated opinions.
KEN Starr’s team of prosecutors did its best to shut down the Washington office with an element of dignity. Yet there remained an unpleasant little secret that continued to dog OIC, no matter how hard it struggled to cling to the moral high ground. That secret related to OIC’s handling of Monica Lewinsky.
The Starr Report had disgorged tens of thousands of pages of the most intimate details about Ms. Lewinsky’s sex life and her emotionally disastrous relationship with Bill